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Shepperson Memorial

another of his students, the late Pat Miller Earnshaw, an African American woman
who had spent a year or two in Edinburgh where she met and married a Swazi law
student, Sam Earnshaw. She lived in Mbabane and taught at Waterford Kamhlaba, an
international school. With the help of a first secretary at the American embassy, she
organised a reception for him in Mbabane, which he greatly enjoyed. He found a good
deal to talk about with the veteran Zulu/Swazi proto-nationalist, J. J. Nquku. ‘Sam’
had an interest in stamps and, as a memento of that visit, I have a set of the Malawi
stamps issued in 1965 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Chilembwe
Uprising. The set is inscribed on the back: ‘Bought in Mbabane – Saturday – 28 May
1977 in the presence of George (Sam – John Chilembwe) Shepperson – illustration
taken, without his permission, from Independent African’.
In 1979 I visited Edinburgh with my girlfriend, and later wife, Monica Ndovi,
whom I had met in Zambia in the previous year. Although brought up in Zomba, her
family came from the north and had strong Livingstonia connections. Both her
grandfathers were ministers in the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP).
She had trained as a nurse and midwife in Edinburgh, and she had known Andrew
Ross in Malawi and Edinburgh. She had even sung in a Malawian choir that Andrew
had organised in Edinburgh in the late 1960s. She got on very well with ‘Sam’ who
liked her and welcomed the opportunity to practise his army chiNyanja – chilegimenti
- and to sing some KAR marching songs! In later years, from 1981 onwards, and
through the 1980s, we visited him every two years in his office with our son, John. He
was always generous and would send John, or his parents, away with a five-pound
note.
I was very fond of ‘Sam’ and I regret that, though I had been in occasional
touch with him on the phone until he was in his nineties, I lost touch with him, except
indirectly, through the kindness of David Stuart-Mogg, in his last years. I am sorry
that I did not make the trip to Peterborough to see him. I will always remember him
for his intelligence, his encyclopaedic knowledge of African, American and Scottish
history, and for his unfailing generosity, kindness and good humour.

Hugh Macmillan, formerly Professor of History, University of Transkei, South
Africa, has also taught at universities in Zambia and Swaziland (now Eswatini).

Archive Images No: 8

Photo: Peter Turner
George Shepperson with John Chilembwe’s
elder son, also John, aka “Charlie”, Blantyre,
Malawi, c1970.

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